- Johnson says he won’t allow vote on ACA enhanced subsidies
Source: United Press International
“House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he won’t call for an amendment vote to renew enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, ensuring higher health insurance premiums through the healthcare marketplace next year. Speaking during a news conference after a House Republican Conference meeting, Johnson blamed the decision on about a dozen Republican members of the House in swing districts ‘fighting hard to make sure that they reduce costs for all of their constituents.'” (12/16/25)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/12/16/House-ACA-subsidies/2801765908803/
- France: Parliament approves social security budget
Source: Politico
“French lawmakers formally approved the country’s 2026 social security budget on Tuesday, handing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu an important political victory and offering some optimism to skittish markets worried France isn’t serious about getting its public finances in check. The bill, which covers state health care and pensions spending, was expected to pass after having already been approved by the National Assembly, France’s more powerful lower legislative chamber, last week, but its rejection by the Senate over the weekend forced another vote.” (12/16/25)
https://www.politico.eu/article/french-parliament-social-security-budget-2026-national-assembly
- Pakistan: Court sentences cleric from banned party to 35 years for inciting violence
Source: ABC News
“A Pakistani anti-terrorism court sentenced a senior leader of a banned Islamist party to 35 years in prison for inciting violence, more than a year after the cleric publicly called for the killing of the country’s then-chief justice, court officials and a defense lawyer said Tuesday. Zaheerul Hassan Shah, a leader of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, was arrested last year after a video circulated on social media showing him offering 10 million rupees ($36,000) to anyone who beheaded then-Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa. Isa had faced criticism from hardline religious groups last year after he granted bail to a man from the minority Ahmadi community in a blasphemy case.” (12/16/25)
- White House launches damage control over unfiltered Wiles interviews
Source: Axios
“The White House rushed to defend chief of staff Susie Wiles on Tuesday after her blunt private views on President Trump’s first year were revealed in a series of stunning on-the-record interviews. Wiles is the most powerful aide in the White House — credited with running a more disciplined, loyal and effective operation than Trump’s first term, which was routinely undercut by leaks and internal feuds. That makes her candid commentary to Vanity Fair — in which she questioned the judgment, execution or consequences of many of Trump’s most aggressive policies — all the more striking.” (12/16/25)
- PayPal applies to become a bank under Trump’s looser financial rules
Source: Engadget
“PayPal is the latest company looking to become a bank in the US. On Monday, the company announced it had submitted applications for PayPal Bank to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions (UDFI). PayPal is already a bank in Europe, based in Luxembourg. … Applications to become a bank have popped up left and right this year, with approval odds increasing under the Trump administration. On Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced that five cryptocurrency companies, including BitGo, Circle and Ripple, received conditional approval to become federally charted trust banks.” (12/16/25)
- Separation of Politics and Entertainment: Thoughts on the Death of Rob Reiner
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“I could probably name 50 entertainers whose political positions I find odious … if I bother to notice those political positions. I mostly go out of my way NOT to. Is there any compelling reason to deprive ourselves of great films or great performances from Oliver Stone, Jon Voit, Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, James Woods, Susan Sarandon, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio … just to indulge our political disagreements with them and maybe cost them a buck or two in box office sales, TV residuals, etc.? The idea smacks of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. As for speaking ill of the dead, even dancing on their graves … well, I’m not against it in the case of particularly unsavory characters. But over political disagreements? No. Tom Smothers wasn’t Charles Manson and Pete Seeger wasn’t Joseph Stalin. They enriched our lives whether we liked their politics or not.” (12/16/25)
- The Palmer Raids: A Precedent for Today’s Immigration Policy Abuses?
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter“The tactics that ICE and CBP are using seem far more appropriate for a police state than a democratic republic. As with so many other recent highlighted civil liberties abuses, though, the problem did not begin when Donald Trump became president. Instead, previous administrations set a number of troubling precedents. Unsavory practices to enforce U.S. immigration laws, including holding detainees without due process for extended periods in overcrowded conditions, certainly are nothing new. Even accosting suspects at their place of employment or on the streets is not unprecedented. One historical episode that bears an especially troubling similarity to the current conduct of ICE and CBP was the so-called Palmer Raids during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.” (12/16/25)
- The Loaded Language of Protectionism
Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux“Language matters. Words have not only technical meanings; they also summon particular attitudes and impressions. And sometimes these attitudes and impressions differ significantly from the words’ technical meanings. In no domain of economic policy is the confusion created by the divergence of words’ technical meanings from the attitudes and impressions conveyed by those words greater than in the domain of trade policy.” (12/16/25)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-loaded-language-of-protectionism/
- How schools still abuse “institutional neutrality” to silence speech
Source: Expression
by Ross Marchand“Defending the rights of students and faculty to speak freely has been part and parcel of FIRE’s mission for 26 years. We’ve seen universities try all sorts of ways to restrict expression, from free speech zones and excessive security fees to extensive pre-approval requirements for events. But one technique is particularly disturbing — using ostensibly pro-free speech policies to chill student and faculty expression. As my colleague Graham Piro recently wrote, colleges and universities regularly claim to embrace ‘institutional neutrality’ — an institution’s commitment to refrain from speaking out on the issues of the day — only to silence speech in the principle’s name. Under a genuine policy of institutional neutrality, students and faculty are empowered to debate such issues, without feeling as if the school administration has declared the matter settled.” (12/16/25)
https://expression.fire.org/p/how-schools-still-abuse-institutional
- Our Parties Have Trapped Us
Source: Persuasion
by Danielle Allen“Every two years, Americans spend an average of $15 billion on campaign advertising trying to fend off the wolves attacking them. But we just end up changing which wolves are briefly ascendant. Maybe we could fend off those wolves once and for all—if we could just get our foot out of that dang trap. But what’s the trap? The trap is an electoral system that has been captured by party processes gone wrong. We’ve had decades of changes — some of them well-intentioned, some about accruing power — to how our political parties operate. They have left us in a place where most members of Congress are elected by only 5 to 8 percent of the electorate in their districts. … Every year, our two parties get better at claiming ever more power for a continuously shrinking membership base.” (12/16/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/our-parties-have-trapped-us
- Democrats and Republicans lost the plot. Young voters know it.
Source: USA Today
by Sara Pequeño“If a new poll is any indication, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party should be worried about the youth vote in the 2026 midterm elections. According to polling from the University of Chicago, about 60% of Gen Z and millennial voters are dissatisfied with both political parties. This includes 25% of Republican voters ages 18-42 who have an unfavorable view of the GOP, as well as 36% of Democrats in that age range who have an unfavorable view of their party. None of this is really surprising, given that polling across age ranges has shown that voters are unhappy with both political parties. What might surprise party leaders, however, are the specific issues that Generation Z and millennials are worried about.” (12/16/25)
- Patrick Deneen’s Bullshit Case Against Liberalism
Source: The UnPopulist
by Matt Johnson“Postliberals certainly agree that serious political, economic, and cultural missteps have happened under liberal regimes. But their critique runs much deeper than that. They believe liberalism itself is fatally flawed. Although postliberals come in many varieties, a common thread is that liberalism is intrinsically defective — that it inexorably leads to social atomization, cultural degradation, and oppression and inequality. Perhaps the best known purveyor of this view is Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen …. Deneen’s analysis suffers from three basic problems: he misrepresents liberalism’s fundamental principles; he presents a warped history of liberalism that dismisses its achievements and exaggerates its weaknesses; and he offers nothing in place of the liberal-democratic framework he wants to destroy.” (12/16/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/patrick-deneens-bullshit-case-against
- Has Orwell’s 1984 Become Reality?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Bert Olivier“Most people would know that totalitarianism is not a desirable social or political set of circumstances. Even the word sounds ominous, but that is probably only to those who already know what it denotes. I have written on it before, in different contexts, but it is now more relevant than ever. We should remind ourselves what Orwell wrote in that uncannily premonitory novel.” (12/16/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/has-orwells-1984-become-reality/
- Doin’-the-Right-Thing Rag
Source: TomDispatch
by Nan Levinson“Any story about resistance within the military must begin by recognizing that it’s not an easy thing to do. Apparently, that’s true even for a much-decorated retired Navy commander, former astronaut, and sitting United States senator. I’m talking about Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. He was one of six Democratic legislators, all military veterans or former intelligence officers, who, on November 18th, released a 90-second video reminding members of the military that the oath they took on enlisting requires them to refuse illegal orders. The implicit context was the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, but their message took on added urgency after the Washington Post published an exposé about an order coming from high up to kill survivors of an airstrike in the Caribbean Sea.” (12/16/25)
- Conservatism Can’t Conserve Itself
Source: The Dispatch
by Matthew J Franck“The past decade, since the entry of Donald J. Trump into electoral politics, has been a disorienting one for … well, everyone. But especially, perhaps, for ‘movement’ conservatives who regard the principles they have always held dear to be as sound as ever, but beleaguered in practice by the events of this young century. Conservatism, from this point of view, should have emerged from the Bush and Obama years bloodied but unbowed, ready to refresh and recommit itself to principles of classical liberalism …. Yet that form of conservatism … is now eclipsed by a new right that is in many ways very old and reactionary: preferring authority to law and rent-seeking to free markets, cheap moralism to authentic morals, and a fearful and inward-looking nationalism to a confident, patriotic internationalism.” (12/16/25)
https://thedispatch.com/article/maga-right-intellect-trump-ideas-extremism/
- A balm of heroism and truth for Australia
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“Within a day after two gunmen killed 15 people during a gathering for the Jewish holiday Hanukkah at Australia’s most famous beach, a very resilient country began to focus on ways to prevent a similar tragedy: Better gun regulations. A warm embrace of Jewish Australians. A sterner check on antisemitism. Tighter surveillance of potential terrorists. Yet a particular act of selfless heroism during the Dec. 14 mass shooting has offered up one more possible solution. A video shows Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Muslim shop owner in Sydney, tackling and disarming one of the alleged Bondi Beach shooters, also a Muslim. This bystander, by bursting bravely into action, may have saved countless lives even as he was shot. ‘God gave me strength’, he reportedly told a cousin from a hospital bed. His father, Mohamed Fateh al-Ahmed, perhaps best described the motives of his son, who gained Australian citizenship in 2022 after fleeing conflict in Syria.” (12/15/25)
- Poor Madsen’s Almanack
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie“Based on shrewd observation of likely weather patterns and early budding of snowdrops and Indian maize, Madsen has been able to describe the events of 2026 as they actually happened.” (12/16/25)
- Australians Being Massacred Shouldn’t Bother Us More Than Palestinians Being Massacred
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“On March 16 of this year, Reuters published an article titled ‘Israeli strikes kill 15 people in Gaza over past day, Palestinian medics say’. Does anyone remember the 15 Palestinians who died on March 16, 2025? Does that day stand out in anyone’s memory as particularly significant in terms of mass murder? No? Same here. I honestly can’t remember it at all. This would have been during the tail end of the first fake ‘ceasefire’, a couple of days before Trump signed off on Israel resuming its large-scale bombing operations in Gaza, so this wasn’t one of those days with huge massacres and staggering death tolls. It doesn’t exactly stand out in the memory.” (12/16/25)
- No Manufacturing Jolt from Tariffs
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy“In theory, tariffs should shift jobs to the protected industries. If these tariffs protect manufacturing, why aren’t jobs shifting there? The argument for tariffs to protect manufacturing relies on an assumption that the imports are of final goods and that the protected country has tariff-free access to intermediate goods (the goods used in manufacturing). In 21st-century America, that assumption doesn’t hold.” (12/16/25)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/no-manufacturing-jolt-from-tariffs
- Trump Watch, 12/16/25
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The Moral Injury in the Caribbean Killings.” (12/16/25)
- Capital Record, episode 274
Source: National Review
“Making America Crony Again.” (12/16/25)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/capital-record/making-america-crony-again/
- The Good Fight, 12/16/25
Source: Yascha Mounk
“Kelly Born on All the Ways AI Is Changing Politics.” (12/16/25)
- Advisory Opinions, 12/16/25
Source: The Dispatch
“Burkeanism and the Administrative State.” (12/16/25)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/burkeanism-and-the-administrative-state/